Photoshop is seen as the tool to have by anyone doing any kind if (often trivial) graphics manipulation, as such there are thousands of people using photoshop who really have no need to, and most of them are using pirated copies because their needs do not justify the cost of actually buying photoshop.

Most photoshop users could actually do everything they need with gimp, and the extra users would serve to spur gimp development forwards.

The best thing for gimp right now, would be for adobe to clamp down on piracy.

Photoshop is seen as the tool to have by anyone doing any kind if (often trivial) graphics manipulation, as such there are thousands of people using photoshop who really have no need to, and most of them are using pirated copies because their needs do not justify the cost of actually buying photoshop.

Was I a Windows user, I would choose Paint.NET (Paint Dot Net) as my graphics tool instead of Gimp.

But no, I'm a Linux user. I mainly use Gimp but am looking forward to see Krita - KDE's answer to Gimp - take the needed steps forward to become a usable tool.

Gimp's UI is cluttered and I don't feel comfortable using it. They fiddled with it for the 2.6 release and it got just worse.

I have never used photoshop, Really never. I have used Gimp/Inksacep/Dia and OODraw and everything fitted my purposes. For hardcore Image Processing I use ImageJ and Price.app . I managed to survive the last 8 years without photoshop. And for me Gimp has been improving performancewise very very fast. I still would like a TCL/TK gfx program wrapping around the amazing work done in ImageMagick. Otherwise I am completely satisfied with this open source product.